The present invention relates to an installation for automatic processing of baggage.
One field of application envisaged is in particular that of air transport for which it is necessary to transfer individual bags manually between an air terminal and the hold of an aircraft.
The bags are generally of parallelepipedal shape and have a base surmounted by two opposed lateral flanks spaced by a distance corresponding to the thickness of the bag.
With the aim of reducing aircraft turnaround times, it is necessary for the transfer of bags between the aircraft and the air terminal to be carried out in a short a time as possible and with means of the lowest possible cost.
Thus the bags are usually fed along conveyor belts themselves guided in translation on transfer platforms in particular, over at least portions of the conveyor path that extends from the check-in area to the aircraft. These conveyor belts are either formed of rectilinear sections, disposed end to end and inclined relative to each other in the case of the non-rectilinear portions of the conveyor path, each of the sections having a belt driven by a drive roller, or formed of a single belt consisting of plates adapted to pivot relative to each other in a common plane and driven together along a route that is not necessarily rectilinear.
However, such devices cannot be implemented continuously between said check-in area and the hold of an aircraft, given the distance that may separate them. Consequently, handling operations are necessary for transferring the bags onto a trolley that is then taken to the aircraft, where the bags are again transferred manually, from the trolley to the hold. These transfer operations are laborious, time-consuming and costly. Moreover, the bags are conveyed in a somewhat anarchic manner on these conveyor belts with the result that the available space is not occupied to the optimum.
A problem that arises and that the present invention aims to solve is then of providing an installation not only for automating the conveying of baggage but also for limiting the space necessary for processing the baggage.